


Rescind

by Ambrosia



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambrosia/pseuds/Ambrosia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpel hears Regina calling, does not bother to answer. Belle is reading a book before him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescind

_A/N: Don't look at me like that. I can still fic. Don't you look at me with that tone of voice this is entirely someone else's fault._

**—**

**Rescind**

**—**

Despite what he may have led his little Queenie to believe, Rumpelstiltskin had indeed heard her irritated and halfway-desperate cries for help. 

That was old magic, you see. Old as him, older, actually, going back thirty-three Dark Ones to the old days before Ogres and fairies and Evil Queens, there was magic in a name. 

It was essentially the rule he lived by. 

Still, he kept a wary eye on the situation, of all things. A glance through a mirror here, straining his ear there, he was well aware of how his little tom foolery was going, so he wasn't too preoccupied. 

Things had settled back down in the month since the thief's escape. He had gifted his maid with a new, more sensible gown— honestly if he had to pause the time-stream one more time to prevent her from snapping her neck because she tripped on his rug while carrying something heavy it was going to grate on him. 

Of course every time he did that the memory was plucked from her brave little head, so he had the unfortunate luck as to catch himself in a paradox. 

Hence the change of wardrobe. 

She was a clever little thing. Rumpelstiltskin knew that the moment she had caught his attention, some days before he appeared before Sir Maurice. Like him, it seemed, she preferred the game of the mind. 

And while he still thought that it was like a squire taking the place of a knight in a joust against him, he had to admire her determination. Most would have wept before him, sniveling for their lives. 

She only wept when she thought he could not hear her. 

No, Rumpelstiltskin thought. A squire wasn't perhaps the right turn-of-phrase to describe little Belle. A squire was also someone who played by a certain set of rules, and watching his maid set out the tea before him, he had to admit that she did not. 

Not in a chaotic way, not like him— he did not errect Chaos, he crafted it, molded it, heated it like shaping and bending fine steel and then carefully unleashing it. 

Even without him asking, she put four sugars in his tea, before setting it some paces away from him. Far enough that, if he did not have magic, he would have had to get up to fetch it. 

Fortunately for them both, he did have magic, so he didn't. 

Rumpelstiltskin snapped his fingers and summoned his tea to him, but Belle did not seem to notice. 

His lips twitched at that, he would have expected a frown, a look, something that would reveal that she had been displeased that he had won the game. 

But there was nothing. She cleared the remaining things away, left the pot on the tray at the end of his table, and when he gave her his leave, happily went back to the small stacks of books she had brought from her newly revealed library. 

 _Rumpelstiltskin_ , sang his ears, snapping his attentions for a moment. 

Queenie was in the town square, head on the choppng block. His spindly fingers did not itch, so he did not worry. If his little rook had been poised to real danger, his magic would have let him know. 

He went to his spinning wheel, sat down on the stool and spun the wood in his fingers. No gold came out, but he did not mind. He did not want to forget, but instead focused his attentions, for the moment, solely on the maid in the corner. 

She made not a sound, but as the hour wore on and still neither of them had moved, she shifted. And shifted again. And shifted yet again, without breaking her focus on the novel in her hands. He could not tell if it was a ruse, this rustling— she was such a strange creature. A creature with feelings that he just absolutely did not know how to accomodate. 

It could be a ploy to draw his attention to her. His attentions were entirely upon her, but he gave not one sign of it. His back was to her, how was she to know that he did not need to see her to be aware of her actions? She wouldn't. 

It could be a lie, to make him think that there might be more in that pretty head of hers than there actually was, but so aborbed as she in her novel that she did not even look up when he flicked a bit of harmless spell at her. She had a finger to her lip, a thumb to her jaw as she rested her head on her palm, smiling at the book as if they had some secret that he could not sniff out. 

Noticing the sun, "I think it might be time for you to start our dinner, hmm?" he tried. 

Belle nodded, absentmindedly, hushing him— the look on her face saying that she would get to it at the end of the chapter, that she was too enthralled to pause before then. 

But he did not see any malice. There was no darkness. 

She didn't play by a different set of rules, apparently. She won the game by refusing to play. 


End file.
